Day 12: Taipei
Chiba 吃吧 at Amba serves buffet breakfast daily and it had a good selection of western and local breakfast. I liked the rice rolls a lot. You get a choice of 3 fillings per rice roll. The local breakfast choices include the usual Taiwanese porridge and also ru rou fan, braised mince pork with rice. They served their juices with science lab beakers. Cute! The restaurant had wooden shelves filled with books and toys. It gave a very comfortable feel. Only down side was that there was no variation to the buffet. So by the 4th day we got tired of the breakfast and went to the nearby Yonghe Duojiang for local breakfast.
After breakfast, we went to Yehliu Geopark to see the queen’s head. Figured we better see it now as it may break off any time…. There was a lot of big bus tourists here. The place was extremely crowded and we needed to queue to take pictures with the queen’s head. For my boys it was interesting as they could relate what they saw to what they studied in their geography. It takes patience if you want to take photos with no other people in the background. For the queen’s head, that was impossible.
Then we went to Jinshan old street for lunch. The restaurant here did not have waiters. We needed to go to the front of the stall to pick up the dishes we wanted and bring it to our table ourselves. At the end of the meal they counted the number of plates and charged us accordingly. Prices were based on size of the plate. It was somewhat a novelty but food was ok only.
We stop by the volcanic crater at Yangmingshan on the way back to the city. Nothing much. Can skip it actually.
We wanted to visit the National Palace museum but expected it to be very crowded after lunch with many tour groups. So we headed across town to 微热山丘Sunnyhills for a tea break of pineapple tarts and tea and to buy the pineapple tarts for friends back home. The pineapple tarts at Sunnyhills were freshly made without preservatives, thus they last 2 weeks only. Unlike most Taiwanese pineapple tarts that used winter melon with pineapple flavoring as filling, Sunnyhills uses genuine pineapple. I believe Sunnyhills now has an outlet in Singapore, which I have not tried, but my friends swear that the ones they sell in Singapore are not as nice as the original from Taiwan. Btw, they served everyone who visits the shop a whole piece of pineapple tart and tea, free. Yes, free! No obligations to buy. You actually get to sit down and enjoy the tart and tea leisurely. You don’t need to ask. They will sit you down when you arrive and the tea set will be automatically served. My husband said that they are so confident of their product, they know everyone who walks in will buy something so the free tea and tart is small money to them. Did we buy? Yes! We bought a carton! ??????Not just a box, but 10 boxes of 10 pieces each packed in a carton. We just sealed up the box and checked that in with the rest of our luggages. All arrived back home in good condition ??
After that we headed back to the National Palace museum around 4pm. Happy to say that there was no crowd and no queue to see the popular jade cabbage and jade braised pork! Suggest you come after 4 to avoid crowds. The museum closes at 6.30pm that day. We saw the bronze displays, jade displays, some paintings, but not the porcelain. This place was huge!
That night, we were too lazy to go anywhere for dinner. We bought Ah Chung Mianxian (Ah Chung Vermicelli) and Hot Star chicken chop, bubble tea etc from XMD streets and went back to our hotel to eat! The Mianxian and chicken chop were so good! It turned out to be a very enjoyable meal.